Pakistan Honour Killing Inquiry Exonerates Police

by Editor | May 31, 2014 3:47 am

THE GUARDIAN – The policeman in charge of the investigation into the bludgeoning to death of a pregnant woman on the streets of one of Pakistan’s major cities has questioned whether her death is any more serious than any other murder he deals with, in comments likely to raise further concerns over how the country deals with so-called “honour killings”.

Three days after Farzana Parveen was murdered by a 20-strong mob of her own relatives, the official report has exonerated officers over the failure to stop the killing, which took place close to Lahore’s high court. It claims Parveen had illegally remarried.

“How is this murder any more serious than all the other cases we deal with?” said Zulfiqar Hameed, the senior officer in charge of the investigation. He said he was outraged by international media reports that suggested police stood by and did nothing.

He said international condemnation had been overdone, and that the world failed to understand the cultural context in which the crime had taken place.